ironpony wrote:
userafw wrote:
Manchin has not helped the populist nor progressive side: many Democrats consider him a DINO - Democrat in name only. If he wasn't critical to retaining the Senate majority, he probably wouldve been kicked out of the Dems some time ago. However, seems like he votes with the GOP 90% of the time, which nullifies the "majority".
Trump - I have nothing to say but bad things about him. I really hoped when he first got elected that he would be a decent president who actually cared about the country. Instead, he polarized and divided the country, set up concentration camps around the borders, and encouraged race discrimination, ethnic discrimination, and LGBTQ discrimination, and discrimination against women, along with reduced opportunities and pay for women, has increased.
I get it, the Christian right thinks the Bible tells them to hate LGBTQs (including a certain church that likes to picket funerals). They also think the Bible tells them that the unborn have all the rights that babies who were born to. Some Christians also believe the Bible tells them a woman's place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. (Then there are also the few who believe God tells them to throw snakes at each other, but fortunately, those are oddities even in the Christian religion). However, I could quote a number of Bible verses that show just the opposite regarding the unborn, and Jesus never told us to kill born people (like immigrants) that we do not like, nor separate toddlers from their parents with no caregivers.
Trump acts like he wants to start a civil war, and some people in Southern states would like to see a do-over of the first civil war so they don't have to treat people they don't like as persons. They are already restricting voter rights: those who are disabled and homebound cannot vote by mail. Even districts with low populations in rural areas are not even allowed to vote by mail. Districts with large populations that lean left are seeing their polling places closed by the conservative right, and gerrymandering keeps the current party in power.
However, war today would be very different than war in the 1860s. War is not the same as duels. In Gettysburg, there were literally so many bullets on the field that some of them actually fused together when the two bullets hit each other. Today, war here would be more like on the fields of Vietnam. Looting would be tame compared to war. With looting, there might actually be something of value left. In war, the whole place gets burned to the ground. In war, the enemies try to destroy the other enemy and everything the other enemy has.
The right can claim about "dead people" voting: but my MOM, who is very much still alive, was reported dead when my dad died. Probably because they filed a joint return. So now she has to PROVE that she is still alive. So does that mean she should not be able to vote, even if she shows up in person at the polling place with a driver's license?
Why do the people in the more blue states care if the Southern States restrict voting? I was under the impression that liberals hate the voting system, since they seem to riot at the idea of Trump getting in. So why do they care about if people in South restrict themselves? Isn't that good for the blue states, if they want their to be less votes in the Southern states?
Pragmatically, the voting restrictions tend to be designed to keep minorities and liberals from the polls. When it comes to national elections, that changes the odds of who wins and which party will have control and the ability to act on its agenda. The red states can control the senate and often the house by blocking blue votes in their own states despite whatever percentage of viewpoints those voters actually represent. We all live by the laws and with the budgets passed at the federal level, so I would suggest we should all care.
Idealistically, voting restrictions run against the constitution. "All created equal." "One man, one vote."
The US Senate is quite distorted at the moment, with the liberal wing representing 40 million more votes than the conservative wing. The red states want to deepen that incongruity applying voting restrictions. It's a pretty brilliant game, if it wasn't so contrary to the goals of Democracy.
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Mom to an amazing young adult AS son, plus an also amazing non-AS daughter. Most likely part of the "Broader Autism Phenotype" (some traits).
29 Jan 2022, 9:20 pm
